


Malfeasance

by Hezjena2023



Series: Rituals!Verse - Blood Magic [1]
Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Character studies, F/F, How being Keeper Marethari's First effected Merrill, Implied homophobia, Merrill before she met Marina, Prequel to Make no Mistake, heteronormativity being suffocating, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27083917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hezjena2023/pseuds/Hezjena2023
Summary: And Merrill hadn’t been sure what it meant so she’d asked Keeper Marethari if it was usual for creating the vallaslin to feel like that. Like her magic had taken up a space in the base of her belly, a pool of some feeling that she couldn’t name, couldn’t properly describe.Something between nostalgia and numinous. Homesickness and hope.What Merrill had done wrong, she couldn’t work out.***Character study exploring Merrill and Keeper Marethari's relationship.
Relationships: Female Hawke/Merrill - Implied, Female Mahariel/Merrill - Implied
Series: Rituals!Verse - Blood Magic [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1976671
Comments: 11
Kudos: 12





	1. Flames of Sylaise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cryptographic_Delurk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cryptographic_Delurk/gifts).



From the fallen tree log, in the centre of her camp, Merrill watched her pace back and forth outside the Keeper’s araval. Back and forth, enough that Merrill’s eyelids were becoming heavy and she had to swallow a yawn. 

Telissa still looked terrible. She had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders to ward off the chill of the late afternoon.  Inside the araval Merrill and Keeper Marethari shared, the Keeper was discussing Telissa’s fate with an armoured man wearing a silver griffon on his chest. His name was Duncan.

Merrill wanted to go over to Telissa, but she didn’t dare. They’d exchanged a single sorrowful look.  It was not hopeful. 

And Keeper Marethari had wanted her gone for a while. Telissa’s face was so pale that the swirling lines of Sylaise’s vallaslin stood out start and deep, crimson on her face. 

Merrill remembered doing it, Telissa’s was the first vallaslin that she’d created, the first time she’d woven her magic into blood.  She’d asked Merrill to do it, gotten permission from the Keeper, and had been breathless when she’d finally told Merrill what she’d planned.  Giving Telissa the vallaslin had taken the whole day, from sun up and the last lines had been inked under the watchful light of torches. 

Which felt poignant. Flames to match the flames she inked on her forehead. 

Merrill had started with the swirling smoke patterns that drifted across Telissa’s cheek. Styalised and beautiful.  Telissa was silent, as was customary. But by the time Merrill had worked her way down her face, and applied the deep red lines to Telissa’s lip, she had gasped more than one. 

She had tried to be careful, lingering longer than she should have on the tender flesh of Telissa’s lip. Painstakingly applied the ink and magic so that her design would not smudge. The whole time, Telissa had been watching Merrill’s hand work, her body curved forward and straining to stay still. 

She hadn’t said a word, neither of them had, but Merrill had thought about it for days, weeks. The heat of her breath on her fingertips. 

And Merrill hadn’t been sure what it meant so she’d asked Keeper Marethari if it was usual for creating the vallaslin to feel like that. Like her magic had taken up a space in the base of her belly, a pool of some feeling that she couldn’t name, couldn’t properly describe. 

Something between nostalgia and numinous. 

Homesickness and hope. 

Keeper Marethari hadn’t given her a real answer. She’d sat back in her chair, folding her fingers together in front of her, a heavy sigh dropping like a cannonball through water. Sinking and settling at the bottom. ‘There is precious magic in your blood, da’len. You must learn when to wield it and who not to waste it upon.’ 

What Merrill had done wrong, she couldn’t work out. 

But from that conversation a shard of ice had grown in Keeper Marethari’s chest and all her words came out cold. She had called Merrill to witness when Telissa had begged her Keeper to give her to the flame, to give her to Sylaise, to let her be a hearth mistress. 

Telissa had tried every trick, begging piety on her knees, unending dreams of fires in the bowels of the world and voices to be interpreted. Her final attempt had left her crying on the floor like a toddler with big tears rolling down her cheeks. 

Merrill could not go to her. Not then, not now. 

And nothing had swayed her Keeper. ‘You are more than yourself da’len,’ Keeper Marethari had reminded Telissa, giving Merrill a look to make sure both girls were listening. ‘You serve the Clan, our people, not your own whim. Trace back your mother’s mother, back and back to Arlathen. Where would you be if any of them had taken the hearth?’ 

So Keeper Marethari had sent Telissa into the forest, with a bow and a dozen arrows with Temlen. To learn the Way of the Three Trees, to walk the Vir Tanadhal.

When Telissa came back she was too exhausted to speak with Merrill. She lost weight, gained muscle. 

Merrill didn’t think she could have done that, made the same choice her Keeper did. She would have let Telissa stay by the fire and allowed her to remain unmarried.  And Merrill would have liked her, by the fire, burning sweet herbs next to Merrill as she poured her way through fragile manuscripts or hand copied critical texts.  She liked Telissa’s dark amber eyes and the way that she laughed. 

Which Merrill knew would have been a bad Keeper. She didn’t need Marethari to tell her anymore, she just felt it. Instincts to be buried, thoughts to be hidden, wishes denied. 

“Telissa is leaving with the Grey Warden.”

With the man with the silver griffon on his chest? The Grey Warden that had misidentified the ruins and the mirror as from Tevinter? The one that had smashed it into pieces as Merrill and Telissa stood there and protested? Her Keeper was trusting Telissa into this man’s care?

“No.” 

Keeper Marethari raised an eyebrow, her words cold and brittle as rain that froze in the night. The vallaslin on her face was likewise for Sylaise, but inked in black.  A warning, Merrill thought, that there was no warmth to be found here.  “No? She must go, there is a poison in her blood that I cannot cure.”

Merrill wanted to ask her if she’d even tried, but she couldn’t argue with the Keeper. She tucked her arms around her chest and made herself smaller, seem disinterested, made her voice flat. Quietly she asked, “is there nothing we can do?” 

That appeased the Keeper. Marethari nodded approvingly, “there is. Tell the Clan to pack, we have already lost Tamlen, we leave at dawn. I will risk no one else to the corruption.” 

“Ma nuvevin, Keeper. Right away.”

Marethari’s words rang hollow. Her promises to keep the Clan safe felt like an afterthought to Merrill. No one else, not after she’d risked Telissa who could barely stand. Not after she’d sent Merrill into the bowels of the forest.

If she was Keeper she’d do better. But she wasn’t Keeper. 

One dead Hunter was unlucky, two a misfortune - two Hunters and her First was plain carelessness. But there would be someone who would jump at the chance to replace Merrill. 

She didn’t have time to argue, didn’t want to rock the precarious position that was the only thing stopping her from drowning. She thought she had a single night before the Clan left and Telissa would leave in the morning with the Grey Warden.

“Not now,” Keeper Marethari corrected, “wait until Telissa has left.” 

Merrill turned to see the members of her Clan already gathering. But her heart hurt under her ribs, painful spasms rocked through her chest and she nodded numbly at the Keeper. 

She moved with the tide and took her place.

Telissa stopped. Out of everyone she stopped by Merrill. With the eyes of the whole Clan on them, Telissa only put her hand against Merrill’s arm and whispered a goodbye in elvish. It was all she dared. 

If Merrill had known that was going to be the last time she’d ever see her again she would have pressed her chapped lips against Telissa’s, begged her not to go, that she - 

But she didn’t. 

And that was a later thought, the product of endless evenings sitting in the guilt and muddling through her own feelings. A conclusion only reached long after Telissa had killed the Archdemon and died in the attempt.  At the time she could do nothing but stand there mute and not able to say a word in protest, screaming silently. She felt herself breaking without a fracture on the outside, an injury that she could conceal, keep working in spite of it. Like a crack in a pottery cup, she would still be able to hold water.

Merrill found herself envying the mirror that Duncan had smashed, at least it got the honour of lying in sharp shards and splinters all over the floor. 

In the hours before dawn, in the quiet space, late enough that the Hahrens by the fire were dozing and early enough that the Hunters had not yet woken up. Merrill snuck out of bed, winding her footwraps as silently as she could, ensuring that the fabric did not rustle. 

On the far side of the aravel, Keeper Marethari was sleeping curled into herself. She was a notorious light sleeper and had moved Merrill in soon after Telissa’s vallaslin. ‘To keep an eye on her,’ she’d said, ‘because they didn’t need that much space. And wasn’t it better to be right near her work?’ 

Merrill dodged the creaky floorboard and slipped through the door. And slunk towards the cave, the dew on the ground soaking through her footwraps. 

Propped against the wheel of their araval was an emptied chest. It was sturdy made of wood and metal, and one of the things owned by the Clan Merrill could say might be hers. In that chest had been the collected sum of the texts which Merrill had painstakingly copied over her apprenticeship. 

Hymns, prayers, rituals took up a large part. The. healing manuals, lexicons, guides to the flora of Ferelden. Diaries of Keeper’s long on the road to Falon’Din and Merrill’s own rough journal. 

She had removed them, one by one. Starting with the ones inked in careless hand. Then the most common ones, a book of Prayers where she knew most by heart anyway. Merrill had taken care to get rid of nothing she couldn’t replace.

And Merrill had drowned the books into the lake, past the halla pen, so that her Clan wouldn’t find them. The sodden pages sunk down to the lakebed, kicking up sediment. But, they wouldn’t know what she’d done, until too late. 

They could be copied again, she’d done it once before. 

She needed an emptied chest to be filled with something much more precious. 

It was easy to find her way back to the cave where Telissa had been, not even the day previous. There was a trail of bloodied bodies, halla and hurlock alike, to lead her into the gaping mouth of the cave. 

Wherein she’d find the Temple to Falon’Din and the shattered mirror fragments on the ground from where the Grey Warden had smashed it to pieces. 

In Kirkwall, she thought the halla was a sign, a foresight of what would happen to Telissa. The road to Falon’Din a sign. 

The image of the dead halla from that night stuck in her mind, she still saw it in the streets of Kirkwall and always ducked away from it, leaving her perpetually lost in the human city. It always appeared like a ghost, stark white fur slashed with crimson lines like vallaslin. Brown, glazed eyes watching her to remind her of her failings. 

With Varric’s wool she could find her way back, even with her eyes closed. 

The Clan was leaving and she had already lost Temlen and Telissa to the mirror. Keeper Marethari has sworn she wouldn’t lose anyone else to it and the corruption it carried. But she had no plans except to run away from it. 

Anyone could stumble across it.

Merrill planned to uphold her Keeper’s promise, but by fixing it. It was worth sacrificing her fingers to the hours of scribbling she would have to do to replace the texts she’d destroyed. Maybe once the mirror was fixed, and the books replaced, her Keeper would surely forgive the destruction. 

Marethari would understand why Merrill had done what she’d done, maybe she’d be proud of her. 

Somehow without Telissa, she could see clearly in the gloom of the underground sanctuary. The memory of Telissa was a flame to rival Sylaise’s. A guiding torch to take her through the deeps. 

Keeper Marethari had told her what was expected of a Keeper. She had a duty that was beyond herself. She had precious magic in her blood, Merrill would wield it to return something taken, draw out the corruption from her mirror, to keep the next Telissa safe. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cryptographic_Delurk's Prompt -  
> ‘...I like to see the variety in how people spin Marethari and the others and how Merrill feels about her alienation from the rest of the Dalish. Though this does take place after Mirror Image, so I'm not sure how much Merrill wants to return there. Maybe it could even be Merrill and Marina going to the Wounded Coast or Bone Pit and making the decision/talking about how they're not about to head the rest of the way up the Vimmarks because of the deteriorating relationship with the Dalish.’
> 
> Inspiration -  
> Merrill - "Being First to the Keeper. I was always... a bit secluded. I studied magic and history while the others were learning the Vir Tanadhal. It's good that I left. I'd have made a terrible Keeper. I was never that good with people."
> 
> I thought the prompt was fantastic and I did really want to explore more of Marethari’s character. And it was difficult to get Merrill to go back, so instead I went back in time. Prequel! :D
> 
> I have some plans for four chapters. Getting Merrill from her introduction in DAO to her introduction in DA2. I want to explore what it was like for Merrill working with her Keeper, because by DA2, their relationship is pretty fraught. And I wanted to touch on her Alienation from the Dalish, why her Clan turns on her at the top of Sundermount.  
> How she went from the woman Feneral (and the Warden) want to take with them into the cave to find out more about the mirror, to the woman Feneral (and Ineria) would happily kill out of fear for what she’s done with the mirror in the meantime. And what Marethari’s influence had been. 
> 
> I know this isn’t quite what the prompt asked for, but I thought it was the best way to touch on the themes without necessarily being in the right locations <3


	2. Path to Falon’Din

Sundermount, that was what Keeper Marethari had called the mountain. It was oddly shaped, Merrill thought, comically conical. Like someone had started to fashion it out of clay and got bored halfway through. Sitting on the eastern side of the clearing, the mountain blocked out the sun for a chilling hour at noon. 

It was the name that Merrill associated mostly with the strange toad-like statue in the shrine, sitting cross-legged under a broken arch and buried into the peak of Sundermount.

Like Merrill, Keeper Marethari made more trips up the mountain than she could count. But unlike Merrill, Marethari rarely came back down again. 

The first time she had gone up, she had told Merrill it was to investigate the ruins of uthenera tombs. She could just spot them, white slivers of marble where sleeping elvhen had slept on raised slabs. They had been exposed by a landslide and the marble shone like bone picked clean by carrion

Marethari had first said she’d dreamt of Soundermount on their sea voyage fleeing the Blight. Told Merrill that the sloping sides had called to her, haunted her. It had made the Keeper restless, she slept fitfully, barely ate. Dark crescent moons hung underneath her eyes and she scratched at the vallaslin on her chin. 

Then she talked of meeting a bird on the slopes, a promise made with a dragon, a debt to be repaid. It made little sense to Merrill and Marethari did not give in to Merrill’s questioning. 

Merrill had thought it was just the stress of moving the Clan so far, with the Blight nipping at their heels. That she was struggling under the weight of all of Thedas’s hopes for the future placed upon the shoulders of the woman, Keeper Marethari hadn’t even trusted to take on the simple duties of hearth mistress. 

But, it would turn out that Telissa had made provisions for her Clan, in her death, the human King she had befriended had given to Clan Sabrae lands around Ostagar in perpetuity. 

When Merrill asked about this under the shadow of Sundermount, Marethari had scoffed, tightening her grip around her staff named the Torch of Falon’Din. She had called the offered lands a churned up battlefield, Blight ravaged and a disgrace. 

They would not be leaving. And Merrill was not to bring up Telissa again. 

‘Come look at this, Merrill,’ Feneral had called beckoning her with his hand. He was a Hunter, a good one, his was crouched by the thorny root, his dagger propping up the stem. 

She rushed to him, dropping into a crouch by the plant she’d only had the pleasure of reading about, ‘felandaris,’ she identified. ‘Don’t cut it, that will upset it.’

He frowned, rocking back on his heels, ‘you sure? It’s right where Ineria wants to set up. Let me grab the guide.’ 

‘Yes, but it only grows where the Veil is particularly thin,’ Merrill explained, peering closer at the vicious twisted stems that looked like demonic fingers reaching up through the dirt to ensnare the ankles of anyone that got too close. ‘Where spirits press up against the living, it’s probably why this place is called Sundermount, get it? because it’s  _ sundered _ .’

Merrill smirked to herself, it was very clever, even if Fenarel didn’t appreciate the etymology. 

And until Marethari came back down from the mountain, Merrill was the closest thing her Clan had to a Keeper. All things considered, it was a good time to be in charge, there was little to do and much to be done. 

The Clan was in a buzz of activity that did not really include her. Merrill couldn’t hunt, couldn’t weave, wasn’t even sure what to say except ‘keep going,’ and ‘you’re all doing a wonderful job.’ 

But dealing with a troublesome weed, now that was something she could do. 

She didn’t like the way she had begun to stand apart from her people as they adapted back to Clan life. 

Though it had taken Merrill time as well to stand on a floor that didn’t rock or roll in the waves. To being under a sky that changed with the passing of the sun and the slow shifting of clouds, that wasn’t rough cut boarded and thin streaks of light. 

Around her temporary tents were set up in bright colours, made of the blankets and cloths that they had brought with them. Bold patterns emerged in the clearing at the base of Sundermount while new aravels were being built, everything that had been lost must be replaced, reclaimed, remade. 

It was hopeful and beautiful and Merrill’s fingers itched to get writing. 

Then there was a clatter, a gasp, a horrified look splattered across Feneral’s face. And all of her hope got lodged in her throat like a fishbone. 

It was Merrill’s fault, she hadn’t been paying attention, she had been lost in thought and didn't notice Feneral walk over to the orange and pink tent that was Merrill’s and her Keeper’s. She hadn’t seen him kneel by her chest, slide out the bolt and raise the lid. 

But she knew that he had found the shattered pieces of the mirror, buried in the bottom of the chest. 

‘No! Don’t touch it!’

The shard of mirror didn’t reflect Merrill’s face or the wood of the ship behind her, or the thin slivers of moonlight that squeezed through the wooden boards above her. It was a large piece as big as both of her fists pushed together. And it was one of the largest pieces, out of hundreds - some as fine as dust. 

Merrill thought it was an eluvian, or it had been anyway. Once used for communication across Elvhenan, she wondered if she looked deeply enough into it, if she could see Telissa. 

It was a furtile and desperate hope and Merrill knew it. Every day they were getting further apart and she started writing letters so Telissa would know where they’d gone. But with no way to post them she kept them tucked into a pillowcase and tucked into the chest full of mirror fragements. 

That last image of Telissa, with her arm on Merrill’s shoulder. The goodbye on her lips. Merrill could see it emblazon on her eyelids, she saw it first thing in the morning and the last thing at night. She pressed the image of Telissa onto the frosted glass, the deep amber of her eyes, the swirl of her vallaslin, the curve of her cheekbone.

And her fingers tightened on the glass, the scarf she had wrapped around the shard slipped and Merrill nicked herself with the tiniest of cuts on her ring finger. 

It was an instinctive reaction the second time Merrill used blood magic. In that it wasn’t like creating the wards to protect the camp from wild animals and shemlen eyes, or like the spells to smooth rocky terrain for the aravals to pass. 

It came from her, hurt her to use it. 

Along with the sting of the cut, she found her magic in her blood and she wielded it to banish the corruption that lived inside the mirror shard. Taking on a part of the mirror's Blight and purifying herself of it, forcing all of the corruption into the bead of blood that dropped from her finger and splattered onto the deck. 

Gone. 

Gone from her, gone from the shard. 

The cleansing took barely a couple of heartbeats, but she was slick with sweat and felt dizzy when it was done. 

She was changed, the mirror had changed. In it she saw a cloudy reflection of her face, emerald eyes with blown pupils, stared back at her. 

Merrill stared at Keeper Marethari, ‘you always knew there was a price for your blood magic, da’len, I have chosen to pay it for you.’

The first and last time Merrill climbed Sundermount it was to enter the little shrine at the top, with the pot-bellied, frog-like statue. The shape of it was not recognisable, as far as she was aware there was nothing like the statue in Thedas. But, the demon it housed was not unusual. A pride demon, Audacity, reclining on a throne of collected knowledge and willing to trade. 

The demon was kind to Merrill, when she first arrived to asked for help. It had been expecting her to come. It welcomed her like an old friend. 

The Veil was thin on Sundermount and it was easy for Merrill to speak with it. It wanted to escape its beautifully carved prison, it wanted the eluvian fixed as much as Merrill did. 

So in reality it only wanted what everyone wanted from her, her to wield her magic in the way they saw best fit. 

Despite her initial success with the mirror, using the magic in her blood to purify the eluvian shard had been just a single occurrence. The demon gave her riddled instructors and copious clues to balancing the corruption within. What might work, what could draw the taint out. And it was sure that her experiment could have easily ended in disaster, as it did for Telissa. 

Which was a little late as Merrill had already tried it twice again. 

The next sliver of glass had turned blunt in her hands and did not cut her no matter how hard she tried. After that the other piece crumbled in her hand into sand, as though it knew she was coming and it protected itself. 

After speaking with the demon, the Blight in the mirror was less resistant. Small slivers of glass were purified and kept separate from the main chest full. 

She was hopeful that she could cure the mirror. Giddy and trembling with excitement. 

Merrill could do it. 

She later found out that the same week she had first met Audacity had been the week that Telissa had died, so maybe that was why that mirror no longer resisted her efforts. 

When Merrill’s sacrilege eventually came to light, Feneral slunk guiltily around camp and wouldn’t meet her eyes. It was clear enough that he had told Keeper Marethari. To make matters worse the hunter hung by Pol and Ineria, they whispered together, flashing Merrill with dirty looks. 

“When did you do it?” The Keeper asked her calmly, fixing her with a look as sharp as broken glass. 

Not why, not how, when. 

Above them the wind howled over the valley and shook the canvas of their tent. Swirling pinks and oranges turned muddy browns as the storm clouds blotted out the dusk. 

Merrill looked down at her hands and noticed that there was blood underneath her nails. She picked at it as though that might get the stain out. When she glanced back up, her Keeper was still patiently waiting for her to speak. Her staff lain over her lap. 

In a small voice, Merrill wrapped her tongue her the truth, tried to explain why she had done it. Words tumbled out of her mouth in an avalanche, once the first pebble had fallen there was nothing to be done. The whole mountain would come crumbling down. 

It felt good to unburden herself of it, every motive and motivation laid like an offering at her Keeper’s feet. 

“There was a cost that you did not pay.” Keeper Marethari told her once Merrill’s words had run dry, in a clipped tone, she looked past her First. “The books were never yours to give away.” 

The rain had started, heavy drops hitting the fabric above them, pounding like the drums played at the new year to scare away misfortune. 

“I can replace them.” 

The disappointed scowl was sketched into her features, but the dark circles under her eyes were gone. She had been invigorated by her accession on Sundermount. In the sea air she had laid down the ties that connected her to Ferelden, sacrificed her worries. “No, you will not.” Marethari returned. “At the next Arlathvhen, I will ask for you to be replaced.”

It hurt. 

Losing two Hunters and a First was careless - unless it was the First’s fault. It was a cruel condemnation and after it Merrill wasn’t sure if another Clan would take her. 

It might have been an idle threat, they still had nine years until the next great gatherings of the Clans. But Merrill felt hot all over. Her skin itched, her brow felt heavy on her face and she tucked her arms over her chest, feeling small. Quietly she told her feet. “I did what you trained me to do.”

“If you thought I would approve, da’len, why didn’t you tell me what you planned?” 


	3. Amulet of Mythal

Merrill left Clan Sabrae with none of the fanfare that Telissa received. There was no one to look back longingly, no one’s shoulder to touch and tell them goodbye. 

‘ _...in uthenera nur- _ ’

‘No,’ Keeper Marethari cut across harshly, striking down the flat of her palm against her thigh. She had been tapping out a rhyme to time out the incarnation, that she was teaching Merrill by rote. The slap had been hard, skin against skin, probably firm enough that the Keeper would have left a bruise upon her own skin.

‘ _ Ir abelas, _ Keeper.’ Merrill swallowed hard and willed herself not to cry, although she could see the sharp grey rocks of Sundermount starting to blunt as she blinked away tears. They’d been at it for hours and Merrill couldn’t quite get the hang of it. She’d almost had it, when she heard Ineria sneering about Marethari only teaching Merrill an eulogy because Merrill was going to kill them all. 

‘Na,  _ na.  _ In uthenera na revas.’ Marethari ground her teeth together in frustration, she started tapping out the same beat on her knee. ‘Recite it again.’ 

Merrill did, sixty more times in fact, until she could say it cleanly without faltering, without messing up the word order, or the grammar or the delicate vowel sounds. And she kept saying it, over and over under her breath until the words came to her as easily the breathing. Like the words had been engraved on her ribs. 

What Ineria had said clung against Merrill’s skin like a sodden cloak after the skies had opened and a torrent of rain had caught her unawares. But, Ineria was wrong. She had to be. Marethari teaching her this was the answer to a question Merrill didn’t dare ask anymore.

What would happen to her?

If Marethari was teaching her something valuable, then the Keeper, surely, didn’t think that she was as much of a lost cause as she had said so? And more than that Marethari hadn’t destroyed the mirror. Well, the Keeper couldn’t, but that wasn’t the point. Marethari had tried, but it fought against the Keeper’s magic as well as it had resisted her First’s best efforts. 

Despite her teaching, things were still fraught between Keeper and First, gone was whatever easy trust Marethari had once had in Merrill, gone like Ferelden, like the halla, like Telissa. But, Merrill thought that things were improving -  _ na melana sahlin -  _ and perhaps Marethari hadn’t given up on her completely. 

It had been that phrase that Merrill was repeating, over and over, under her breath the first time she met Marina Hawke. 

The prophesied was not what Merrill expected. She was human for a start, with a staff strapped observably on her back and no wings. Why had Merrill thought Hawke was going to have wings? Or at least a beak? 

Then she noticed the staff on her back again. A half-remembered warning, humans did terrible things to Mages? Didn’t they? She couldn’t remember and decided not to ask, just in case it was a rude thing to ask a human. 

With Hawke, was a man that looked rather similar to her. The same black hair and piercing blue eyes. Blue as the morning sky. And a dwarf that looked like he had gotten dressed in the dark. Merrill bit her tongue so she didn’t point out that his jacket was undone. 

‘I want to go with them, when Hawke comes,’ Merrill had told Marethari on a night where the moons were full and bright and the stars glittered like dewdrops in the sky. It had been a few months before she’d actually met Hawke. It had felt like the right thing to do at the time, an appeasement to her Keeper. 

Draconis had shone brightly above them, a reminder to Marethari of the dragon to whom she owed a debt, though Merrill saw swift wings that might pluck her up on talons and take her away from the Clan. 

Taken away, like Telissa -  _ emma ir abelas _ \- to fight an Archdemon wearing the shape of a dragon.

Telissa was gone. 

And the dragon was coming to Sundermound. 

‘I want to go with them, when they come,’ Merrill repeated when Keeper Marethari hadn’t said anything. Just looked at Merrill like her words were yet another disappointment. Not the appeasement she had hoped for. 

‘Da’len,’ Keeper Marethari pursed her lips, ‘if you leave-’

She didn’t need to finish her statement. 

Merrill knew. 

‘I won’t come back.’ Merrill affirmed, pulling a blanket she had been wearing as a shawl tighter around her shoulders. ‘I won’t.’ The night air felt suddenly colder, crisper, even though the wind was still. 

Maybe that was the answer to Ineria’s question. Why would Marethari have her learn a eulogy, repeat it until she could hear the words echoing in her sleep. Over and over, sorrow and death, if it wasn’t for her? 

Gone like Tamlen, gone like Telissa - the only kindness Keeper Marethari could give was the proper words to accompany her along the Path to Falon’Din. 

Keeper Marethari wanted her to leave, that much had been clear, but Merrill still had the power to choose the moment. 

And the moment was looking at Merrill with sapphire blue eyes, the corner of her crimson-stained lips pulled up in half a smirk. Hawke had nice arms, a pointed chin and a blush across her cheeks. She didn’t look that scary, as far as humans coming to whisk her away from home could look, Marina Hawke was quite pleasant to look at. 

Then Marina Hawke opened her mouth. A joke passed between herself and the Dwarf, at Merrill’s expense. And that stung. But, Merrill had skin as thick as rock armour and she shrugged the comment off. The not-scary human couldn’t hurt her. 

Her skin was thick enough to not be hurt when they found Feneral. Sat at the edge of camp like their statues of Fen’Harel. Stationed between the camp and the pox-marked caves of Sundermount that played home to giant spiders. His job was to waylay them, should they turn their beady eyes towards the  _ aravals _ . 

He’d smirked at Merrill, his whole face lit up with spite and thanked Hawke for taking Merrill from them, warned them about her and stormed off. Even if the ground had swallowed her up, dropped her down till she was lower than the Deep Roads, the layers of rock and dirt still wouldn’t have been thick enough. 

Her ribs ached, it had been a long time since her heart had shattered, but the shards still pricked her underneath the sternum. The edges didn’t dull with time. Feneral had used to be her friend - but that was gone with the books she’d sunk in the lake. It had felt so necessary, but now it just hurt. 

Feneral was gone. 

Hawke made a joke about what a nasty little git Feneral was. 

Merrill hadn’t answered, didn’t laugh. Just tucked her arm over her hurting ribs. 

But, Marina Hawke had noticed. Even as they battled their way through the damp and gloomy cave, Marina was still watching her -  _ souver'inan isala hamin _ \- when finally her eyebrows had furrowed together and she moved a little closer to Merrill, her hands fluttered uselessly in front of her, but seemed to decide against any course of action that would culminate in them touching. 

Softly, she asked, “are you alright?”

Her tone had changed, Merrill noticed. The boy with black hair spotted the change as well.

Marina Hawke had been bright, confident and throwing easy jokes between her companions. But now Hawke was softer, kinder, fixed and focused on Merrill and Merrill felt -

Wretched. 

The blade of the knife bit into her palm, cool and sharp. Then just damp. The barrier had been raised by Keeper Marethari, to keep people away from accidentally stumbling upon the Uthenera tombs. After Ineria had caught a few humans having a picnic on an Ancestor’s sarcophagus. Marethari had insisted that it was their duty to keep the artefacts left from being looted. 

And Merrill couldn’t find any flaw with the argument. In fact that necessary locking and unlocking of the barrier had made Merrill altogether less squeamish. Not, that she had been overly before. From Kirkwall there had been rumours spread that a Qunari dreadnought had run around somewhere on the Storm Coast, but Merrill hadn’t seen any Qunari. 

She supposed that the barrier would work as well against Qunari as it did against Humans. Although she hadn’t actually seen any of the Qunari herself. She wondered what kind of horns they might have, like halla, she pictured. Tall and twisting, like the crowned images of Ghilan’nain. 

The barrier responded to her blood, dripping from the wound and onto the patchy yellowing grass. 

And Marina was watching her, the corner of her mouth tugging up into something not not a smile. A smirk? Merrill felt a sting of shame at the crude barrier constructed, with enough time and consideration she could have constructed a better one. But, it had never been one of Merrill’s priorities. 

But, there was already so much blood in Sundermont, why not add a few drops more?

The dragon that Keeper Marethari had been waiting for, wasn’t a dragon, until she was.  _ Asha’bellanar.  _

‘Step carefully child,’  _ Asha’bellanar _ had told Merrill, ‘no path is darker than when your eyes are shut.’

The road curved towards Kirkwall, Merrill’s steps were heavy as she crossed the boundary line of her Clan. Like Telissa, she was leaving them. Sooner than expected and not likely to return. A dragon ushering them away. But, unlike Telissa there was little to bring her back, except a box of mirror shards that she would need to retrieve. 

She was thinking about just how she’d get her hands on them and the pooling dampness against the bandage on her palm where Marina stepped in front of Merrill, forcing her to stop. 

Marina opened her mouth, seemed to think better of it, looked to her brother for support. Found none, but discovered her voice and asked Merrill, “you do want to come with us right? Because, you don’t have to.”

It was predictable, Merrill thought, sadly. Shutting her eyes tightly.  _ Asha’bellanar _ was right, her road was dark and she didn’t want to look at it. Into the wide and endless unknown. Merrill didn't know what Keeper Marethari had told Marina about her, she’d been packing her few belongings in the rucksack that was now clutched in her hand, dragging along the ground. 

\-  _ vhenan him dor'felas _ \- 

So squaring her shoulders, Merrill didn’t look Marina Hawke in the eye, she just looked straight ahead and told her stubbornly, “I am sorry if I am a burden, but-”

“No, no, I want you with us. ‘Cause, that back there,” she whistled, low and appreciative. Hawke’s fingers reached out for Merrill’s upper arm, her palm against her flesh. 

Merrill looked up then, almost dropped her things. Her heart in her throat, shuddering out an unsteady rapid rhyme. Then her full attention was drawn by Hawke’s hand on her shoulder. She stared at the mage’s fingertips across her skin. “What?”

“Sorry,” Hawke murmured, pulling her hand away swiftly, her cheeks blushing a rather dark red as she pulled her hand back, thinking she’d horribly insulted Merrill. She looked sincere, worried. 

There was hope there, in the expanse of Marina’s sky blue eyes. 

So Merrill said something that she thought she might even mean, “it’s okay.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahren na melana sahlin, emma ir abelas,  
> souver'inan isala hamin, vhenan him dor'felas,  
> in uthenera na revas.
> 
> Elder your time is come, now I am filled with sorrow,  
> weary eyes need resting, heart has become grey and slow,  
> in waking sleep is freedom.


End file.
